I can say without much reservation that Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s explanation to justify the deportation of individuals like Mahmoud Khalil made a lot of sense to me. He is a guest granted a privilege, that – had we known his intentions prior – may not have been allowed into the country.
It is speculation as to whether he knew his intentions, but the argument plays well in parallel to one we know to be true. Foreign influence arrives from many places under the cover of a legitimate purpose to undermine America. Neither Radical Islam nor the Chinese have been shy about that. They came when Obama poked holes in the border, and reports suggest the same in more significant numbers when Biden erased it. And while it is true that some came to chase the American dream more than ever arrived to tap a dependency culture that pays better than work where they came from. It was sold to them that way and our enemies used it to infiltrate the homeland.
Whether Khalil was a student or not, whether his papers had lapsed or not, the question of his detention has inspired some who didn’t blink an eye at the violation and detention of Americans in DC on Jan 6th, 2021, to suggest his free speech rights have been violated. Shaky ground, indeed. But it is not an unreasonable suggestion. During the Biden Administration, I suggested that there was significant pressure from lobbyists and activists to use the pro-Palestine/pro-Hamas campus protests to institute broad-brushed restrictions on speech that they wanted to impose on everyone.
Never let a crisis go to waste, especially one upon which you toss gasoline to achieve other ends. A leaked virus from a Chinese lab comes to mind – leveraged to start several inroads to a land of tyranny, speech suppression being but one. Shutting people up is near the top of their list, next to civilian disarmament. The people can’t be allowed to have force superiority over the government, even though that was what the Second Amendment was meant to protect. And while a lot of folks like to say Amendment 2 exists to protect the rest, Amendment 1 is just as dangerous.
Both are inalienable rights that exist with or without government, but do Khalil or any other visitor enjoy these rights with impunity?
John and Nisha Whitehead are concerned.
The war on due process is here.
No trials. No hearings. No rights. Just indefinite detention and secret deportations.
This is the fate that awaits every one of us, not just immigrants (legal or otherwise), if the government’s war on the Constitution remains unchecked.
More than two decades after the U.S. government in its post-9/11 frenzy transported individuals, some of whom had not been charged let alone convicted of a crime, to CIA black sites (secret detention centers located outside the U.S. authorized to torture detainees) as a means of sidestepping legal protocols, the Trump Administration is using extraordinary rendition to make those on its so-called “enemies list” disappear.
The first round of arrests and deportations to a mega-prison in El Salvador supposedly targeted members of the infamous Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
Carried out with little evidence and without court hearings or due process, these roundups reportedly may also have swept up individuals with no apparent connection to gang activity apart from common tattoos (firearms, trains, dice, roses, tigers and jaguars) and other circumstantial evidence.
We’ve been applauding the capture and deportation of vile criminals allowed into our nation with a clear understanding that we voted for it. No one hedged. This is what they said they would do. We will get them and put them on planes if they aren’t here legally. Bye-bye. Should we be concerned that the authority used here is little different than a long list of injustices since the Patriot Act became law? Does it matter if we send illegal non-gang members away? Should we make exceptions if they stood on a rhetorical soapbox and spoke for or against something, anything?
I’m not convinced there are no background checks before an illegal immigrant is sent out of the country to a foreign prison, but the reality is that if we broke their laws by going there, we’d be in a jail, not let loose in the countryside with an Obama phone (remember those?), an ATM card, a housing voucher, and a court date sometime after the next presidential election. We’d be in jail. Loved ones would have to petition our government to ask theirs about our status – assuming we wanted to go home.
I don’t think Khalil should be deported for his speech. I’m even a bit dubious about charges related to his part in damaging/seizing property on campus. But if he is here on a visa, any of those things with or without his “permission slip” expiring would get you kicked out of just about any other country in the world – including ours.
In other words, it wasn’t just speech. It was incitement – not protected speech, and actual riot, after a fashion, in the name of a terrorist group that hates America as much as it hates Jews. Khalil’s behavior aided and abetted the denial of rights to actual Americans. If he deserves a trial, then it is like the one J6rs waited years in detention to get, and why can’t any of these individuals be detained in another country (or its jail) with a court date to be determined?
I don’t think it’s particularly just in either instance, but some people in America wish its citizens and government ill. I suspect that, much like the backlash against the Democrat party that let them in, Americans will be patient about the cleanup as long as this administration continues to make progress restoring other liberties.
But before Trump’s term ends, something must be done about indefinite detention and the loss of due process. We can’t consider the job done because no one can be free until that happens.
